Pain Indexing
by saltedpin
Summary: Zack and Reno get drunk; unwise adventures are had in Hojo's lab.


**NOTE: **This was written a long time ago, and as such it's not especially compliant with Crisis Core, though I have tweaked it a little.

* * *

><p>Sephiroth was well aware of SOLDIER's reputation within the other arms of the Shinra Electric Power Company. The Turks viewed them as an overly blunt instrument, with no sense of subtlety or style, at best a distraction from more covert operations, at worst a bunch of over-grown frat boys with swords and more testosterone than brains. The Midgar Security Forces, on the other hand, viewed SOLDIER as narcissistic glory hogs who took the spotlight away from their own, far more valuable work amongst the populace.<p>

While Sephiroth did not go so far as to actively court a better relationship with either organisation, he did wish sometimes that other members of SOLDIER would try harder not to confirm their prejudices.

He thought about this now as he watched SOLDIER Second Class Zack stumbling from wall to wall down the corridor towards him, reeking of beer and cigarettes and the cologne he apparently thought was an acceptable substitute for bathing.

In some ways, Sephiroth almost admired Zack – provided that admiration could live alongside a deep-seated desire to hold someone's head in a bucket of mako runoff until the bubbles stopped surfacing. Zack had come up through the ranks with lightning speed, despite his personal habits, and despite all attempts to beat those habits out of him. Zack thrived in adverse conditions – indeed, Sephiroth suspected the only environment in which he would _not_ thrive was underwater. And even then, Sephiroth thought, scowling, he'd probably find a way.

While he was not usually one to run from something, Sephiroth was just beginning to turn around and head back the way he had come, when Zack, pausing in his bumbling progress along the corridor for a moment, lifted his head and saw him.

"SEEEEEEEEEEEEEPH," Zack cried out, his face exploding into the kind of joyous expression Sephiroth usually only associated with dogs catching sight of their masters.

Cringing internally, Sephiroth turned back to face his tormentor. "How many times do I have to tell you, SOLDIER Second Class? Do not – ever – call me that."

"But I'm off duty," Zack said, his face apparently genuinely blank.

Sephiroth sniffed him. The alcoholic fumes sizzled his hyper-sensitive nose hairs. "I should hope so," he said disdainfully. "What exactly are you doing here at this hour?"

Zack slung an arm around Sephiroth's shoulders. Sephiroth shrugged it off. Zack put it back. "It's actually a secret," Zack said in a stage whisper. "See, Reno has some alcohol that he stole from the room where security keeps all the stuff they confiscate from the slums, and I thought I'd come get it. Because we were drinking at Seventh Heaven, but then Reno started a fight with some guy's motorbike outside so we got kicked out and then –"

Sephiroth held up a hand. "I don't want to know," he said. He scowled down at Zack hiccupping against his chest for a moment, then glanced up at the sound of voices at the end of the corridor. Oh perfect. This was all he needed – it was Heidegger, Scarlett and a group of their more obsequious hangers-on. Without pausing to think, Sephiroth grabbed Zack by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back around the corner, pulling him hurriedly along the corridor behind him.

"Where are we going?" Zack asked muzzily from behind him. Only once they were in the lift and Sephiroth had hit the button for the science labs did he answer him.

"To see Professor Hojo," Sephiroth said.

Zack hiccupped. "I thought you hated that," he said.

Sephiroth paused, his scowl softening in surprise. "I've never said that."

Zack belched loudly before sliding over to rest his head on the cold metal of the elevator handrail. "Yeah, but you always get that look on your face whenever you have to go down there – the one like you ate a shoe and now it's on its way back out."

The elevator dinged before Sephiroth had time to get angry at this latest evidence of Zack's outrageous, if elliptical, lack of respect for his senior officers. Leaving Zack there in his repose against the handrail, Sephiroth marched out of the elevator and looked around. The lights were off and the lab was empty. While Sephiroth knew Hojo occasionally worked late, long after everyone else had gone home, he didn't appear to be in the lab at this moment. Barely suppressing a sigh of relief, he walked over to the reception desk. He took out his Shinra-issue fountain pen and, tearing off a square of notepaper, began to write Hojo a note.

It wasn't long before Zack, curious by nature, wandered out of the elevator to look around.

"Don't touch anything," Sephiroth snapped without looking up.

"I won't," Zack said, slightly defensively. He wandered this way and that for a short time, before pausing to peer into the various terrariums that lined the back wall. "Hey Seph," he called. "What's in here?"

Sephiroth looked up, and then down again. "Ants," he said.

Zack tapped on the side of the terrarium. "Hello, ants," he said. The ants waved their tiny feelers at him before going on their way. Zack was overwhelmed with inexplicable affection. This happened to him fairly often. At one time he had formed a great attachment to the dead worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila, and had tearfully refused to finish the bottle, instead taking it home where it had lived on his windowsill until Reno, in a fit of spite, had eaten it one night after Zack had accidentally vomited onto his last pair of pants.

"I never thought of Hojo as the pet-keeping kind," Zack said, straightening to inspect the terrarium above.

"I don't think they're pets, Zack," Sephiroth said, not looking up from the apparent novel he was writing to Hojo.

Zack turned to look at him. "Then what are they doing here?" he asked perplexedly.

Sephiroth exhaled. He had a feeling he knew what was coming. "They're probably being experimented on, Zack."

"Experimented? On?" Zack asked, his face looking like someone had stamped a giant question mark on it. "Well, what will happen to them after that?"

Sephiroth exhaled mightily. "I really don't know, Zack. You'd have to ask Hojo." Then, against his better judgement, he added, "Probably they'll be incinerated, or something." He didn't need to look up to have a perfect picture of the horrified expression on Zack's face.

"_Incinerated?_" Zack gasped, turning and pressing his back protectively against the terrariums. "But Seph, that's _horrible!_" He looked furtively in both directions. "We've got to stop him," he said in a stage whisper.

Sephiroth, finally finishing what he wanted to say, put the lid back on his pen and stood up, looking at Zack. "Zack, they're _ants_," he said. "I can assure you that nobody will miss them." He frowned slightly. "And anyway, when did you start to care about this sort of thing? I once saw you beat a cactuar to death with a rifle butt. It took thirty minutes and it screamed the whole time."

Zack looked defensive. "That was different," he argued. "I was going to eat that. And anyway, it attacked me first." Zack ruefully rubbed his backside at the memory. "These poor ants never hurt anyone!" Zack was starting to become upset. "And what's the reason for their deaths?"

"Science?" Sephiroth suggested rhetorically. It did no good. There was no dislodging some ideas from Zack's head sometimes. Sephiroth was mildly annoyed with himself for ever bringing Zack here, _especially_ after Zack was a few sheets to the wind. He always got completely maudlin when he was like this. "Zack, if you must insist on this venture, can you do it another time?" Sephiroth asked. "I'm really very busy. And you have evening parade in twenty minutes." Sephiroth paused, then added conciliatorily, "If you really want an ant, I'll let you dig one out of my back yard."

Zack's face hardened. Sephiroth was not getting the point _at all_, and Zack could see that new tactics would have to be deployed in order to save the ants from firey death. Reluctantly, he pulled himself away from the terrariums, following Sephiroth back into the elevator.

Sephiroth looked at Zack sharply from over his shoulder, watching him closely. It wasn't like Zack to let an issue drop so quickly and so quietly. Even as he stepped back into the elevator with Zack following closely behind him, Sephiroth had a foreboding feeling that something really annoying was going to happen.

* * *

><p>Taking a swig from the bottle he was carrying, Reno asked, "So, remind me again, why are we at work?"<p>

Zack sighed theatrically. "To save the ants, dumbass. Hojo will incinerate them if we don't."

Reno made a slight 'Ahhhh,' noise and looked indifferently off into the distance.

Amazingly, it hadn't been too difficult to convince Reno to come on a mercy mission to rescue insects. Since President Shinra had decided it would be pertinent to send Rufus away on a fact-finding mission to Icicle Town, Reno had found himself with more free time than he knew what to do with, and his life was less frequently in danger without Rufus around to develop selective deafness at the moment he uttered the safe word. While he was not, on the whole, particularly interested in the fate of ants, he was finding it necessary to do something to entertain himself, and besides, the venture involved two of his favourite words – 'breaking' and 'entering'. The fact that he also go to rip off his place of work was just the icing on the cake.

Despite Zack's zeal and Reno's general expertise, the evening had got off to a bad start. First of all, they had gotten a little carried away whilst preparing themselves for the evening's activities at Seventh Heaven. Then, on the way to the Shinra building, Reno had insisted on making a quick stop at a hostess bar he knew of, which kept the alcohol within sprinting distance of the door. However, while he was ogling the staff he had mis-grabbed and come out with a bottle of milky chocolate-flavoured lolly-water, rather than the whisky he had been aiming for. He drank it sulkily after Zack had convinced him they had to continue on their way, but in doing so ended up with a milky chocolate moustache and much of the rest of it his down his shirt front.

Avoiding the Midgar security patrols and slinking through the darkness of the alleys that lead to one of the Shinra Building's back entrances had been easy enough, as Zack had always known it would be. Leaning down to inspect the exceedingly complicated access lock, however, he began to have misgivings. His swipe card didn't have after-hours access, and he was pretty sure that Reno's had been confiscated after Rufus had come into his office in the morning to find Reno had drunk the entire contents of his liquor cabinet and was passed out on his office couch wearing his spare suit.

He was just about to give voice to his discouragement, when Reno swiped a card through the lock. It made a pleasant dinging sound and the small LED changed from red to green.

"I thought your access privileges got revoked," Zack said as Reno opened the door.

"They did," Reno said, "but I swiped Palmer's card when he went to the toilet. Easy as."

Zack knew better than to ask what exactly Reno had been doing in Palmer's office in the first place and wordlessly followed him into then dimly lit corridor. "Do you know where we are?" he hissed as they tip toed loudly along, their footfalls echoing off the metal walls.

"Of course," Reno sounded offended. "I used to sleep down here sometimes when Tseng thought I was out on missions. There's an access ladder, we can get to most floors from it, though there's no floor markings so we'll have to guess where we're up to."

They found the access ladder and started the arduous climb up from the bowels of the Shinra Building. The going was slow and they were subjected to several nasty surprises along the way whilst peeping out of grills in order to check their progress – what Scarlett was doing to the handsome new engineering intern on her desk, President Shinra relaxing in his office hot tub with half the staff of the Honeybee Manor, Sephiroth ferociously dotting the i's and crossing the t's on some late night paperwork.

"Oh," said Reno finally, his face lined with light and shade as he peered out of the latest grill. "I think we're here."

"Finally," Zack said from below him. "I wish you wore a watch, we don't even know how much time we'll have until the science staff turn up for the next shift."

"You don't wear one either," Reno pointed out as he jimmied open the grill.

"I used to, but you fed it to that chocobo that time," Zack grumbled.

"That's not fair, I didn't think it would actually _eat_ it," Reno said defensively. "Anyway, it won you that bet."

Zack had to concede that that was a fair point. Reno got the grill open, slithering out of the newly created hole like a long, red-haired snake. Zack followed after him, pulling himself up and out like a gymnast.

"Now what?" he asked as he crouched beside Reno.

"Don't look at me," Reno shot back. "This is your idea, you're the one with the ant boner."

"I do _not_," Zack hissed. "Anyway, we have to hurry up. The science staff get in early, I know because Seph once made me go to one of their stupid meetings to find out about whatever."

"Just a question," Reno said as they stood up, "how much longer do you think you can go on calling him that before he flips his shit and tears your head off?"

"Oh, he likes it," said Zack airily, "you can tell. He just doesn't realise he likes it yet."

Reno apparently decided to let that bit of Zack-logic go unremarked upon. "So where are these ants that are so amazing we climbed all the way up here to get them?"

"This way," Zack said. He took a few steps, then paused. "I'm going to take my boots off," he said. "No one is supposed to be up here at this time, so if they hear us walking around it'll be a dead giveaway." He reached down to begin unlacing them.

"Yeah, good idea," Reno agreed. "I'm going to take my shirt off."

"How will that help?" Zack started to ask, but Reno had already flung his black Turks jacket into the corner and was starting on the buttons of his shirt. Zack shrugged. Reno seemed to have some kind of objection to clothes in general, and he wasn't about to start an argument with him about it.

The boots and the shirt removed, they continued on. "The terrariums are just here," Zack said. To his horror, there was already three fewer than there had been the day before. He tapped lightly on the glass. "Don't worry, little fellas," he told the ants inside. "I'm sorry we came too late for your friends, but I promise we're going to get you out of here." He pulled the tank at the top of the pile down and handed it to Reno.

"How many of these are you expecting me to hold?" Reno asked as Zack plonked another one down on top of the one he was already carrying, so that only his eyes and the top of his head were visible.

"Just those two," Zack said, stacking the remaining two, lifting them easily.

"Just remember we're not all mako-injected testosterone freaks," Reno grumbled. "How are we going to climb down while we're carrying these?"

Zack paused. "Ah," he said. "I hadn't thought of that." He thought about it now. "Maybe – maybe we could just walk out of here very casually, and people would just assume we're supposed to be here? I mean, it's not like anyone would think we'd steal ants."

"I wonder why not," Reno asked drily.

Zack started to warm up to his plan. "Yeah, come on," he said. "It's the best chance we have. Do you want to save the ants?"

"At this point I could take them or leave them," Reno said, but Zack had already pressed the elevator button, and the floor lights indicated that it was beginning its slow ascent. After a few moments, there was a soft ding! and the doors opened.

The second Zack set foot inside the elevator, all hell broke loose.

"SECURITY BREACH ON THE SCIENCE FLOOR. ALL AVAILABLE SECURITY STAFF PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE SCIENCE FLOOR," a computerised voice screamed at them from every angle, as red warning lights began to flash and klaxons blared as if heralding the end of the planet itself.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK," screamed Reno, throwing himself inside the elevator as Zack punched buttons like a man possessed. "Fucking sadistic Shinra security! Of _course_ the alarms don't go off until _after_ you're in the elevator and you think you're home free."

Even inside the elevator the sirens and lights continued. "Do you think Sephiroth is still at work?" Reno asked, trying to re-arrange the terrariums in his arms.

"Of course he is," shouted Zack. "I think he lives in his office or something, he doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'free time'." He elbowed another of the elevator buttons. "Fuck it, we'll get off on the SOLDIER floor," he said. "I know a back way, and if Seph's on his way up the science floor it should be empty now."

The doors opened, and Zack and Reno hurtled out, skidding down the long grey corridor, dirt flying out of the tops of the terrariums. At the end, they stopped and peeped around the corner.

"Coast is clear," Zack whispered. "I can see into Seph's office from here, and he's not in it."

"So where's this back way?" Reno asked.

"There's stairs," Zack said. "They lead down to storage and the quartermaster's office. From there we can get out to the loading bays and then onto the street. It'll be easy."

"Fine, I'll take your word for it," Reno said. He followed Zack down the corridor, jamming Palmer's purloined swipe card down through the lock on the door that lead to the stairs.

Zack was right – with most of the security staff concentrating their energy on the science floor, they only had to contend with a couple of beta-phase Shinra drones, which Zack kicked into the wall, hurting his foot but otherwise causing no trouble.

There was a moment of horror when they emerged into the loading bay to come face to face with a newly commissioned Scorpion, but the machine sat dark and dormant – it was obviously awaiting deployment elsewhere, and had not yet been powered up for duty.

Finally, chests heaving with exertion, they slammed the door that lead out onto the alleyway behind them.

"Fucking _fuck_," said Reno, sliding to the ground and placing the terrariums down next to him. "I have to come out with you more often, that was ace." He took a hip flask out of his back pocket and took a swig. "Want some?"

Zack gratefully accepted the flask, taking a huge swig and feeling the pleasant burn down his throat. He handed it back to Reno, then leaned down to inspect his newly liberated friends. "Hey ants," he said, waggling his fingers at them. "You're free now!" He slowly turned the terrariums down on their sides, spilling the dirt over the concrete surface of the alley. The ants, free but confused, circled warily, waving their antennae.

"See, they don't appreciate it, man," Reno said, slurring slightly. "You should have left them where they were. Jerk ants."

"They're new at this," Zack said defensively, grabbing Reno's hipflask back from him. "Give them a bit of time, this is the first time they've probably seen anyone apart from Hojo."

Reno shuddered. "I'd want to be on the other side of a glass wall to that guy, too," he said. He produced another hipflask from somewhere else on his person and started to drain it. The first grey light of Midgar dawn was beginning to show over the tops of the buildings.

"I have to be at work soon," Zack said, rubbing his eyes. He took another drink. "Just need some alcohol to wake me up."

As he dropped off to sleep, he didn't even hear Reno beginning to snore next to him.

* * *

><p>Hojo, on finding all his ants gone, a pair of SOLDIER boots lying in the corridor and a Turk jacket with 'RENO'S, BITCHES ' written in the collar, had apparently applied Occam's Razor to the situation and asked for Zack and Reno to be called into his office.<p>

Sephiroth, on finding that the only missing inventory was four terrariums containing experimental ants, came to the same conclusion and sent out word that anyone who saw Zack was to send him straight to his office immediately.

The problem was, no one seemed to know where Zack and Reno _were_. Building security reported that the access card Director Palmer had reported missing earlier that morning had been used extensively throughout the building during the night, but after the two had left the SOLDIER floor the trail went cold. No one suspected the causes of the evening's excitement were snoozing in an alleyway just outside the Shinra loading bay.

The hot afternoon sun was pounding down through the ring of pollution that hung permanently over Midgar before Zack and Reno woke up.

"Fuck," said Zack, then, "_Fuck_," as he realised the full extent of his hangover. He shielded his eyes from the horrible, horrible sunlight and tried to curl up into a ball. His efforts at protecting himself from all external stimuli were destroyed as Reno, a few centimetres from his ear, began screaming.

Unfortunately, he had thrown up on himself sometime during the course of the morning, and the contents of his stomach – one bottle of chocolate liquor and rather a lot of whiskey – had proven an irresistible treat for the newly freed ants, which were now swarming over his neck and chest. It looked like he had an enormous moving beard. He continued to scream, swatting at the ants in a frenzied attack, leaving them crushed on the ground.

Zack groaned and rolled over. Trust Reno to ruin _everything_.


End file.
